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Best Psychotronic Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of psychotronic cinema — measured across 1,196 indexed frames from 17 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Psychotronic films over-index on teeth, skin and blood — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Evil Dead II (1987)

    Sam RaimiDP Peter DemingIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ashley Williams travels to a secluded cabin in the woods with his girlfriend Linda where they find a tape recording of a professor and a book of evil. This unleashes a bunch of evil spirits that constantly terrorize Ash. Meanwhile a journalist comes to the area to study the book of evil. Ash and her end up having to survive this swarm of evil until morning comes.

  2. 2

    Army of Darkness (1992)

    Sam RaimiDP Bill PopeIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ash is transported with his car to 1,300 A.D., where he is captured by Lord Arthur and turned slave with Duke Henry the Red and a couple of his men. When Ash is thrown into a pit, he defeats two monsters and wins respect of Arthur's army and vassals. The Wiseman points Ash as The Chosen One that will retrieve the Necronomicon but Ash is only interested in returning home. When he learns that the only way to return to his time is using the Necronomicon, Ash decides to travel to the unholy land of the Deadites. The Wiseman advises that he must say the words "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to safely get the evil book. However, Ash forgets the last word and an army of the dead resurrects to attack Arthur fortress and recover the Necronomicon. The battle between the living and the dead is about to start and the support of Henry the Red is the only way to help Ash and Arthur to defeat the army of darkness.

  3. 3

    Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

    Jason EisenerDP Karim HussainIMDb 6.1TMDB 5.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    A vigilante homeless man pulls into a new city and finds himself trapped in urban chaos, a city where crime rules and where the city's crime boss reigns. Seeing an urban landscape filled with armed robbers, corrupt cops, abused prostitutes, and even a pedophile Santa, the Hobo (Rutger Hauer) goes about bringing justice to the city the best way he knows how - with a 20-gauge shotgun. Mayhem ensues when he tries to make things better for the future generation. Street justice will indeed prevail.

  4. 4

    The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

    Rob ZombieDP Phil ParmetIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    In Ruggsville, Texas, the police under the command of Sheriff John Quincy Wydell attack the house of the sadistic serial killers Firefly family (a.k.a. The Devil's Reject) and they arrest mother Firefly, but Otis B. Driftwood and Baby Firefly escape from the siege. Tiny is wandering nearby the house and also escapes. Otis and Baby call their patriarch, the mad clown Captain Spaulding and they schedule to reunite at an isolated motel in the desert. When Otis and Baby arrive, they kidnap two families of singers, using sadism and violence against the harmless persons. Meanwhile, Sheriff Wydell promises to capture and kill the runaways, seeking revenge for the death of his brother, the Deputy George Wydell.

  5. 5

    Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

    David LynchDP Ronald Víctor GarcíaIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Essentially a prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's earlier TV series "Twin Peaks". The first half-hour or so concerns the investigation by FBI Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and his partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) into the murder of night-shift waitress Teresa Banks in the small Washington state town of Deer Meadow. When Desmond finds a mysterious clue to the murder, he inexplicably disappears. The film then cuts to one year later in the nearby town of Twin Peaks and follows the events during the last week in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) a troubled teenage girl with two boyfriends; the hot-tempered rebel Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and quiet biker James Hurley (James Marshall), her drug addiction, and her relationship with her difficult (and possible schizophrenic) father Leland (Ray Wise), a story in which her violent murder was later to motivate much of the TV series. Contains a considerable amount of sex, drugs, violence, very loud music and inexplicable imagery.

  6. 6

    The ABCs of Death (2012)

    Xavier Gens, Andrew TrauckiDP Nicolás IbietaIMDb 4.7TMDB 5.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    The ABC's OF DEATH is an ambitious anthology film featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film. Inspired by children's educational ABC books, the motion picture is comprised of 26 individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free reign in choosing a word to create a story involving death. Provocative, shocking, funny and ultimately confrontational; THE ABC's OF DEATH is the definitive snapshot of the diversity of modern horror. Drafthouse Films, Magnet Pictures and Timpson Films are proud to present this alphabetical arsenal of destruction orchestrated by what Fangoria calls "a stunning roll call of some of the most exciting names in horror across the world."

  7. 7

    Bloodshot (2020)

    David S. F. WilsonDP Jacques JouffretIMDb 5.7TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    After he and his wife are murdered, marine Ray Garrison is resurrected by a team of scientists. Enhanced with nanotechnology, he becomes a superhuman, biotech killing machine—'Bloodshot'. As Ray first trains with fellow super-soldiers, he cannot recall anything from his former life. But when his memories flood back and he remembers the man that killed both him and his wife, he breaks out of the facility to get revenge, only to discover that there's more to the conspiracy than he thought.

  8. 8

    The Amityville Horror (1979)

    Stuart RosenbergDP Fred J. KoenekampIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Based on a true story that was claimed by writer Jay Anson, The Amityville Horror is about a large house on the coast of Long Island where newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz and their three children move into the house that they hope will be their dream house which ends up in terror. Despite full disclosure by the real estate agent of the house's history, George and Kathy buy the house. George says, "Houses don't have memories," but they turn to their family priest Father Delaney who believes the house is haunted and performs an exorcism on the house. But satanic forces in the house causes him to become blind and makes him very sick. With the help of another priest Father Bolen and a police detective, George and Kathy face the fears of the house, but not knowing the forces are planning to possess George and then the children.

  9. 9

    Nosferatu (1922)

    F. W. MurnauDP Günther KrampfIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Wisbourg, Germany based estate agent Knock dispatches his associate, Hutter, to Count Orlok's castle in Transylvania as the Count wants to purchase an isolated house in Wisbourg. They plan on selling him the one across the way from Hutter's own home. Hutter leaves his innocent wife, Ellen, with some friends while he is away. Hutter's trek is an unusual one, with many locals not wanting to take him near the castle where strange events have been occurring. Once at the castle, Hutter does manage to sell the Count the house, but he also notices and feels unusual occurrences, primarily feeling like there is a dark shadow hanging over him, even in the daytime when the Count is unusually asleep. Hutter eventually sees the Count's sleeping chamber in a crypt, and based on a book he has recently read, believes the Count is really a vampire or Nosferatu. While Hutter is trapped in the castle, the Count, hiding in a shipment of coffins, makes his way to Wisbourg, causing death along his way, which most attribute to the plague. Hutter himself tries to rush home to save his town and most importantly save Ellen from Nosferatu's imminent arrival. In Wisbourg, Ellen can feel the impending darkness as Nosferatu gets closer. But she learns that a sinless woman can sacrifice herself to kill the vampire. Will Hutter be able to save Ellen either from Nosferatu and/or her self-sacrifice?

  10. 10

    Un Chien Andalou (1929)

    Luis BuñuelDP Albert DuvergerIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    In a surrealistic film with input from Salvador Dalí, director Luis Buñuel presents stark, surrealistic images including the slitting open of a woman's eye and a dead horse being pulled along on top of a piano. A mysterious film open to interpretations ranging from deep to completely meaningless, this short (17-minute) film certainly presented something new in the cinema of its day.

What psychotronic films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a psychotronic frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — teeth is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • teeth4.2×
  • skin2.2×
  • blood2.1×
  • shadow1.8×
  • eyes1.8×
  • curtain1.8×
  • stubble1.7×
  • beard1.7×

How psychotronic films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate psychotronic from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 14%low anglevs 5% baseline
  • 12%high anglevs 6% baseline
  • 29%dayvs 43% baseline
  • 29%naturalvs 44% baseline
  • 29%closeupvs 21% baseline

What breaks the pattern

A Hard Days Night (1964) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,196 frames from 17 films carrying the psychotronic label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/psychotronic

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used